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Heef Olives

A stew of beef rolled with fat, fried, then simmered with gravy, pickles, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Heef Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut thin slices of tender beef about 3 inches wide.

  2. Separate the fat from the lean pieces.

  3. Beat the fat pieces with a rolling pin.

  4. Cover the lean pieces with the fat and season with salt and mixed spices.

  5. Roll them up separately and tie with thread.

  6. Dredge with flour and fry until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Make a strong gravy with coarse pieces and skins, carrot, and turnip.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned butter and flour, then season with ketchup, white wine, browned oysters, and force-meat balls.

  3. Stew on low heat with cut pickles for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the threads before serving and garnish with green pickles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tender beef
Forms the rolled outer meat that gives the olives their main bite and structure.
Fat pieces of beef
Spread over the lean meat to add moisture and richness as the rolls cook.
Flour
Coats the rolls and thickens the gravy, helping the surface brown and the sauce body.
Butter
Browned in the gravy to add nutty aroma and richness to the sauce.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the stewed gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Fry the dredged rolls until golden brown. Flour coating browns through the Maillard reaction, giving flavour and colour. Too little heat leaves the flour pale and pasty, while too much burns it before the rolls cook through.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, turnip, ketchup, white wine, oyster):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, turnip, ketchup, white wine, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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